Shake down to Oeiras
23 March 2017
Carole Young
We will be leaving Lisbon at the end of this month; it will be emotional as we have become very attached to this city. Christmas and New Year were great, the city was tastefully decorated and the atmosphere was low key but still magical.
We have visited so many places and have never been bored here. We have even taken up baking; Paul has been making bread and I made my first ever madeira cake! Paul also had a go at painting and produced an impressive watercolour of some Portuguese washing!
We returned home to the UK at the end of January for five weeks; this was a busy time in which we spent five days preparing our house for new tenants, visiting our friends and families and stocking up on various boat parts from You Boat; we also bought Swallow's injectors back to be serviced, as we had a lot of smoke when the engine was on. It was lovely to see everyone, especially our beautiful grandson who had his first birthday party the day before we left - thank goodness for Facebook video!
Our bags were stacked to maximum capacity and weight for our flight home! - we also took back loads of tea bags ( they're never the same over here)
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A few days after returning back to Lisbon, Swallow was lifted out of the water for her annual scrub and check-up. The lift out was done at our marina; they did us a good deal for this and also hard-standing and a jet wash. Paul worked really hard cleaning the hull ( we are copper coated), polishing, changing the anodes, anti-fouling the prop and sorting out the speed log paddle wheel, which was encrusted with barnacles; there were also remnants of rope wrapped around the prop shaft! Paul also put the injectors back in. We were back in the water within four days. As most female crew would probably say, living on the boat in the yard is not ideal as it involves weeing into a bucket and carrying the bowl of washing up down the ladder! The winds were pretty high too, I didn't feel as safe as I do on the water.
Just before we went away Paul contacted Westaway Sails in Devon who had supplied Swallow's original sails; they still had all the details and so we ordered a new Premium Dacron main sail. To Paul's delight this arrived the day after we were dropped back into the water so, with the help of Ken, another UK sailor, he successfully fitted it. We tried out the new sail a few days ago; Drew and Jackie (Madness) flew over from London for four days and we sailed to Oeiras, stopped for a lunch of Greek salad and king prawns on board( the marina didn't charge for the mooring), and back again.
We had a fantastic three hour sail to Oeiras; the wind started as a F3 to 4 and increased to a F4 gusting 5; we flew along on a close reach to starboard, achieving 7 knots. The sail back was pretty much the same on a port tack; we have realised just how tired and stretched our old main sail was, bearing in mind it was twenty years old, it's done us proud getting us all the way to Lisbon from Gosport. Now Paul is coming up with ideas on how to recycle it; he may make a hammock/ sunshade- sounds good to me!
It was wonderful having Drew and Jackie here; as well as a day sail we took them to Cascais on the train, enjoyed an evening of Fado and on their last day we devoured a delicious fish lunch of red mullet at Senor Peixe in Parques das Nacoes. The day before they arrived was my birthday and our third wedding anniversary- we had a lovely lunch in our favourite place, Alfama. Sounds like all we do is eat and drink- ummm, yep, about right.
Today, unusually, it's pouring with rain, hence me catching up with the blog. We will spend the next few days preparing ourselves and Swallow ready to move down the coast and round Cabo St Vincent into the Algarve; exciting times ahead. Millie, Ula, Kady and Locomotion have already made it to Lagos, we are looking forward to catching up with them. Stay tuned!!!!